


miles to go before I sleep

by mimosaeyes



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Self-Hatred, in which I basically yell at Jon through Jon's POV to be nicer to his boyfriend, post-173
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24912694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: It doesn’t seem to make a difference whether Jon smites or spares an avatar. He can’t save anyone.Post-173. A conversation about morality, monstrosity, and hope.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	miles to go before I sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed by [animaginaryquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/animaginaryquill).
> 
> Title from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. I don’t much like his work, but this is also not my favourite TMA fic I’ve written. (When things get depressing in canon, I find it harder to come up with good reasons for them to take heart. I tried.)

The houses seem sullen to Jon as they make their way down the endless street. The owls and nightjars have stopped their calls, and whereas before they’d heard the occasional shriek of a child, now there’s only silence. It feels pointed, almost accusatory.

He knows instinctively which direction will take them out of this domain, so he walks while keeping his gaze trained on the silhouettes of each building they pass. From the road, all that’s visible are darker shapes against the dark sky. The pinpricks of light in it are not twinkling stars but slowly blinking eyes.

A list of names plays in his mind as he focuses his attention on each house in turn. He may have stopped speaking, thanks to Martin, but he still knows what each child imagines lurking in the shadows around them. He listens to the trembling reasoning behind the hiding spots they’ve chosen: _it can’t sneak up on me if I sit with my back to the wall; nothing can hurt me if I stay under my blanket._ He experiences, vicariously, the tightness in their throats from trying to be quiet. The hands clamped over their mouths to stifle a whimper when it escapes.

At some point, without consciously deciding to, he’s tangled his own hand in the straps hanging off his backpack, wrapping them around his fingers and over his palm. He squeezes until the pressure and pain blot out thoughts of what’s going on around him. What he’s allowing to continue, even though he knows very well what it’s like to be an orphan alone in the dark.

“It’s getting brighter, at least,” Martin observes from somewhere to his left. There’s a brittle, slightly forced cheerfulness to how he says this. By now, Jon recognises it as him attempting to be optimistic.

Jon sighs near-soundlessly. “A little. Maybe.”

In the house to his right, a little girl opens the door to the last room she hasn’t checked yet. It has taken her a length of time she cannot easily quantify to work up the nerve to move around, rather than stay put somewhere that seems safe. The room is empty. She curls up in a corner, and Jon feels the moment she gives up on looking for her mother. She understands that there is no comfort to be found in other people. There is only the night and the unrelenting dark.

He shudders, clenching his hand into a fist and hunching his shoulders. “Let’s just keep moving.” His voice is hollow.

Martin is looking down and frowning. “Jon,” he says, “stop that. You — you’re hurting yourself.” Moving swiftly from disapproval to alarm, he reaches out and tugs on Jon’s hand, forcing them both to halt. 

Jon immediately tries to pull away. Then he goes still. Even without being able to make out Martin’s expression, he can feel the force of his glare.

But Martin’s fingers are gentle and warm against his clammy skin as he unravels the backpack straps. “What were you thinking?” he chides. “This is your burnt hand, you’ve probably already got nerve damage. It can’t be good to cut off the circulation like this.”

Jon remains silent.

After a few more seconds of fruitless squinting, Martin releases his hand and fumbles for the other one. “Come on, we need more light.”

Jon still doesn’t say anything. When they walk more quickly, the children’s names and plights reel off dizzyingly in his head. He closes his eyes, as if that would stop the deluge.

Martin’s grip on his hand tightens. “Jon? What’s going on? Talk to me.”

The names change. Not!Sasha, Jude Perry, Jared Hopworth. Oliver Banks, Arthur Nolan, Callum Brodie. It doesn’t seem to make a difference whether Jon smites or spares an avatar. He’d stood in that Flesh garden and said _I can’t save everyone. I can’t save_ anyone. Now he really knows it’s true. Martin should know too, but he’d said he hates when Jon says things like that.

He bites his lip. He’s not good at lying, so eventually he settles on a partial truth. “I keep... knowing things about the children.”

“I thought you could control that now.” Martin pauses, then asks, “How much longer until we’re out of here?”

Faint static rises as Jon checks. “The equivalent of seventeen minutes.” Time and distance have little meaning now, so his estimate is based on footsteps and heartbeats.

Somewhere along the street, a little boy pulls a storybook from his bedside table and flicks on a nightlight. Jon knows the bulb will cast strange shadows in the room, and fizzle out before he reaches the end of _The Monster at the End of This Book_. Jon knows that that’s the all-time bestselling _Sesame Street_ book, and that the plot revolves around Grover pleading with the reader not to turn pages because he’s afraid to meet the monster at the end. Of course, there is no monster except for lovable, furry old Grover himself. That’s been the case every other time the boy has read the book. He won’t know this time, though. Not for sure.

Martin is calling his name to get his attention. He’s already begun raising his free hand, presumably to slap Jon again, when Jon hurriedly says, “Sorry. I was just... It’s fine.” He gives a breathy, half-hearted laugh. “Anyway, it’ll be over for me in sixteen minutes.”

A beat. “Oh,” Martin says quietly. “I get it. You’re _choosing_ to know. Because you feel guilty.”

Jon frowns. He really is terrible at hiding anything from him. “I’m already leaving them to suffer,” he points out. “The least I can do is... bear witness.”

Martin takes a deep breath and exhales noisily. “That’s not what you’re doing, though,” he says, and something about his tone makes them both stop walking at the same time. “You’re punishing yourself, Jon. Don’t.”

“Why? I’m the one who opened the door and ended the world. I’m the reason they’re stuck here.” Jon pulls his hand back from Martin’s and gestures wildly to indicate their surroundings. Even as he speaks, he wants to make himself stop, but the words keep spilling out of him, spiky and bitter and everything he wishes he could keep bottled up instead of taking it out on Martin all the time. “It’s these kids, but it’s also everyone else in the domains we’ve passed so far. If killing avatars doesn’t release those people, what am I supposed to do to Magnus to _fix_ all this?”

He really wishes they’d decided to have this conversation somewhere they could properly see each other. As it is, he doesn’t know what to make of the long pause before Martin replies.

“I don’t know. But what are you saying — that we shouldn’t be going to the Panopticon in the first place? We can’t just _give up_.”

As soon as he says this, Jon reels backward as if he’s been physically struck. Because he _has_ been giving up, he realises. With every encounter they’ve had, he’s been feeling more and more like he can’t do anything to help.

“We’ll figure it out,” Martin says, closing the distance between them again by taking a few steps forward. “And we’ll make things better. I know it.”

Jon searches his face, or at least, what he can make out of it. “What about what you said before you heard the statement? You said leaving children in this place would be inexcusable. That it would be _monstrous_.”

He’d made that call before Martin had even noticed anything amiss. Then he’d made his point to Martin in the cruellest way, knocking on Callum Brodie’s door and watching Martin’s reactions. He’d barely protested when Martin asked to hear about the domain, and afterwards he’d asked _Was that what you wanted?_ like he’d been vindicated by his horror, like it’d satisfied some terrible hunger. Did that make him a puppet of the Eye, hoping to squeeze a little more dread out of Martin? 

Or did it make him the monster at the end of all this, himself addicted to dragging the trauma out of people?

“I think the monstrous thing,” Martin says slowly, “would have been to kill a thirteen-year-old boy to feel less helpless, when you knew it might not have helped all the children he was tormenting. I think every one of our options here is monstrous, so if you’re second-guessing the one we went with, you’re probably on the right track.”

The words _our_ and _we_ reverberate in Jon’s mind for a second.

“I think I made it too much your choice,” he blurts out. “I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to have all the answers. I — I rely on you a lot, so I don’t lose myself. I’m afraid I may already have.”

Martin makes a sort of upset noise and wraps him in a hug, which Jon returns after a moment of being stunned.

“It’s alright,” Martin says, his voice muffled as he presses his face into Jon’s hair. “From now on, we make decisions together, and if some of them are bad, we try to make up for it when we get to London. We rely on each other. Okay?”

Jon thinks there just isn’t enough strength or hope to go around, at the end of the world. But still he nods, and says, “Okay,” and holds Martin close in the dark.

Far above them, the filament in a broken streetlight buzzes and flickers. Once, twice.

**Author's Note:**

> Available on tumblr [here](https://mimosaeyes.tumblr.com/post/621909424175513600/it-doesnt-seem-to-make-a-difference-whether-jon).
> 
> This picks up on themes I’ve explored in two earlier episode codas. For a more optimistic take on choices/free will/saving the world, see my post-169 fic, _[all it was (was all about you)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24438373)_. For more Jon guilt/self-flagellation, see my post-166 fic, _[hold you ’til I hold you right](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24056488)_.


End file.
